A day after record rains lashed Hyderabad and led to loss of life in the city, the departing monsoon dumped record amounts of rain for the month of October in Konkan, Pune, Mumbai and parts of Marathwada. The untimely and heavy downpour, predicted by the Met department, caused waterlogging in Pune city and its suburbs while more crucially it caused widespread damage to key summer crops of soybean and cotton in Marathwada, said farmers.
In the western part of the state, Mumbai, Pune city and Pune district received the most rainfall, along with Konkan. Mumbai recorded 86 mm of rain at Santacruz, Pune city recorded 112 mm, Baramati 148.4 mm while Ratnagiri town 122.9 mm. The rains in these parts reportedly damaged paddy crops. The rainfall in Pune caused waterlogging in parts of the city.
Udupi in coastal Karnataka also received heavy rainfall of over 190 mm till Thursday morning while Shivamogga district recorded over 200 mm.
The rain-bearing deep depression system that caused record rainfall in Telangana moved westwards, weakened into a low-pressure and lay over south and central Maharashtra on Thursday. Coupled with strong winds from the west coast, this led to heavy downpour in western and coastal Maharashtra through Wednesday up to Thursday morning.
The weather system is expected to move northwestwards into the east central Arabian Sea off Maharashtra coast and is likely to strengthen into a depression near the north Maharashtra-south Gujarat coast by Saturday, said the India Meteorological Department (IMD).
The IMD has issued a yellow-code warning for Konkan coast, Pune, Mumbai, Thane and parts of Vidarbha and Marathwada for Friday and added that moderate rainfall will continue after that.
Prior to the development of this weather system over Bay of Bengal, Marathwada had been receiving intermittent rainfall. However, between October 12 and the morning of October 15, districts of Nanded, Latur Beed, Parbhani and Osmanabad received moderate to heavy rain, completely damaging crops of soybean and cotton ready for harvest. The Hindu BusinessLine reported that the state might be looking at damage across an estimated 50 lakh hectares, with soybean and cotton cultivated on over 40 lakh hectares each.
In Prabhani’s Mirkhel village, Ravi Gaikwad is facing heavy losses after his soybean crop, cultivated over an area of nine acres, was destroyed. Gaikwad had begun harvesting on two acres of the nine acres; however, even that crop was affected.
“Intermittent rains made it difficult to harvest crops in time. Soybean is more resilient to water than cotton, but the intensity of rainfall increased over the past week and most of my crop was damaged completely,” he said.
Soybean crop is selling at over Rs 4,000 per quintal as of now.
The only solace for Gaikwad is the small turmeric crop he planted on his land, which will benefit due to the rains.
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